Bass Reeves was sixty-eight or sixty-nine years old at Oklahoma statehood. He had served for thirty-two years as a federal deputy. His commission was ending not because he had failed at his work but because the political and legal structure that had authorized it was being replaced by a different structure that had different uses for men like him.
He did not retire. He joined the Muskogee Police Department as a patrol officer.
By the accounts that survive, he continued to work effectively. The Legends of America page on Reeves cites the claim that he had zero crimes on his beat during his time as a Muskogee patrolman — a figure that, like others in his career, is hard to verify from primary sources but reflects the assessment of contemporaries who knew his work. He continued in that role until his health declined, approximately two years before his death.
## The Death of Bass Reeves
Bass Reeves died on January 12, 1910, in Muskogee, Oklahoma. He was approximately seventy-one years old. The cause of death was nephritis, then commonly called Bright’s disease — a kidney condition that was fatal in an era before dialysis or transplantation.
The Muskogee Phoenix, in its obituary, wrote that he would be remembered for his “devotion to duty, his unflinching courage and his many thrilling experiences.” Hundreds attended his funeral. Newspaper obituaries ran nationally.
He is buried in the Agency Cemetery in Muskogee. The exact location of his grave within the cemetery is, according to the sources, uncertain. It is not marked with a monument. The man who in legend never lost a man he was sent for and never missed a shot he took is buried in an unmarked location in a cemetery in the city where he spent the last years of his life.